Elizabeth Olsen will always have her older sisters, twins Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen, in her corner.
“[My sisters] were forced to watch all my plays my whole life and go to my dance performances,” Elizabeth, 36, jokingly told The Times of London in a Friday, November 28, profile of her relatives’ unwavering support of one another. “We’re just a supportive family.”
According to Elizabeth, she never received any acting advice from Ashley and Mary-Kate, both 39. (The twins notably kicked off their entertainment career as toddlers, sharing the role of Michelle Tanner on Full House before launching an onscreen empire all before age 16.)
“It feels irrelevant to talk about [acting] after 15 years of working,” Elizabeth added, telling the newspaper that her childhood was “pretty chaotic.”
Elizabeth Olsen: My Sisters and I Were Raised to Be ‘Empowered’ Women
“I was the youngest of four,” the Eternity star explained. “We were all born within five years.”
Now-exes Jarnette and David Olsen share son James Trent, twins Mary-Kate and Ashley, as well as Elizabeth. David later welcomed two children with second wife McKenzie Olsen.
As Elizabeth has followed her sisters’ footsteps in entertainment, she’s been candid about their tight-knit bond and even told Us how they were all raised to be “pretty empowered.”
“People should feel more strong as women now more than ever,” Elizabeth told Us and other reporters in 2017. “The thing that I’ve been trying to wrap around my head is, like, at what point did my parents make me feel like a very strong female? I don’t really know how that happened but I always felt like a very empowered young female and it’s something that my sisters and I try to figure out.”
Inside the Secret World of the Olsen Twins
She previously explained why it felt like an “advantage” that her big sisters were twins.
“I always felt that having older twin sisters was an advantage,” Elizabeth told Harper’s Bazaar in 2022. “I felt very clear about how I was going to navigate lots of things because of watching them. I also felt very protected. There’s something that I’ll never experience [in their twin] connection, but I feel lucky to be witness to it.”
Amid the Olsens’ bid for continued privacy, Elizabeth’s career has been on the rise.
“The fans are so loyal and it’s nice to play the same character for ten years, but with Marvel you never know the next time you will be used in a film,” the actress told The Times of playing Scarlet Witch in the MCU films and subsequent TV series. “You have to live your life and make decisions to be in things that are important to you in the meantime. I’ve always tried hard to figure out how to do things in between the Marvel films.”
Elizabeth recently stepped out of her superhero cape to play Joan in A24’s Eternity, an afterlife romantic comedy where her character must decide which of her two deceased husbands is her endgame.
“[The movie] reminded me of the musicals that my mom showed me when I was growing up,” Elizabeth mused to the outlet. “She showed me every single classic — Guys and Dolls, Carousel, Oklahoma! I loved them and I took every single performance class I could because I was so in love with musicals.”
